The Father of all Comforts

"…May the grace of the LORD Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14).
…and the page flips closed. I read the last lines of 2 Corinthians, and the presence of Paul still seems to pervade.

His complete confidence that he was commissioned and carrying out the Lord’s will leaps off the page. There seems to have been no doubt in his mind as to who he was, what he was to do. He seems to have been confident that he was in the center of the Lord’s will. He knew the power and life of Jesus flowing through him in a very real way.

The funny thing is--or the frightening thing--he didn’t point to his visions or miracles as proof. He pointed to his sufferings. It was in these that the power of Christ was manifest in him. Is this the path we have to travel?

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10-11).

I close the Bible but thoughts are not closed. Heart is not closed. Words from worlds past open a longing to know more of Christ, but also show windows into my warped thoughts. I realize I long for that intimate relationship, but still fear. I fear what path God will take me on to bring me to a deeper relationship with Christ. Paul’s confidence is a foil that shows my fear; a fear that God will drop bombshells and shackle me with suffering to produce an ethereal saint.

Paul writes from his sufferings, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all compassion and the God of all comfort…” (2 Cor. 1:3).  But sometimes the fear in my heart casts him more as the Father of all judgment. Paul, despite his sufferings and persecutions, saw God as the Triune God of comfort, the God of life. The God who renewed him day by day. The God who had eternal hope for him. The God who sustained him.

“But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17-18).

“…. We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence… Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 3:14, 16).

Daily, I chose to trust. I chose to put behind me shadows of past that still cast dark in my present thoughts. I chose to pursue intimacy with God, knowing that his grace will be enough for whatever path I travel, whether I doubt that as I embark. I chose that he is a gracious Father who draws me closer to him, whose permitted events are for my good. I chose to believe that he will be there no matter how high or dark or deep the path.

C.S. Lewis said that “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.” In Paul’s changing and challenging circumstances, he always remembered Christ and his goodness. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). Daily—God is for me. He who gave me his own Son, how will he not also give me all things? Who loved me while I was still his enemy? Daily, I fight with weapons “that have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). We have an enemy—and Paul was “afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3). Daily, Satan wants me to doubt God. But he is good. He is faithful. He speaks through his word as my Father, the God of all comfort and mercy.